As another followup, I should mention that the JVC unit *does* resume when playing back files through a USB flash drive after a power cycle (I got a 1GB cheapie at Microcenter recently) ONLY if you don't physically disconnect it (thereby being a possible thief magnet) between said power cycles. The JVC seems to create a placeholder (either in its own memory or on the drive itself) that vanishes once the device is physically disconnected from the head unit.

Which makes sense. Flash drives are mounted exactly as the name implies: as drives. When you unplug a drive, all handles immediately becomes invalid, and purged from memory.

Try it with your PC: Play a file from your flashdrive, pause, unmount the flash drive, plug it in again, and resume.

However, the NS-C5111 (which also has an SD card slot, which I did not test)

I stopped in at a BestBuy recently to test the NS-C5111's SD card slot and ogg support. The person there told me it did not support it, although he admitted not knowing what ogg/vorbis was also. I popped in a 4GB SD card and was able to play an ogg file without issue. I'll most likely get this model as I want ogg support more than bluetooth on a radio. Bluetooth and an SD card slot is a hard combo to find also.

I'd rather not have bluetooth head unit. It interferes with the wireless networks in my city. I.e., whenever bluetooth is turned on, my laptop's wi-fi reception goes haywire.

Wierd. I haven't used my laptop's wireless the same time I've been using bluetooth yet. You referring to 802.11x WiFi or Cellular WiFi?

802.11 WiFi of course. Basically, the way Bluetooth works (frequency-hopping spread spectrum) bollixes WiFi. At least, it does here in my city. Which is why I cringe everytime I'm on a wireless network and I see someone coming closer with a Bluetooth handsfree kit.

I went into Halfords today as they have Car Stereos plugged in so you can test them. I tested a OGG song stored on a USB key fob.As I suspected it worked fine on the 2 JVC's that I tried, these were KD-G721 (£129.99) & KD-SH1000 (£299.99).It did not work on one by the name of Ripsound (never heard of it before). Unfortunately, there were no others with a USB port accessible on the front.

Judging by the Web search results I've gotten, the KD-G721 and/or the KD-G722 are the UK versions, and the 720 is the USA version. Other than that I don't know what the differences are (it would be tough to get your hands on both).

This one here looked cool to me, but I'm afraid of the quality of a brand I've never heard of: http://www.plu2.de/

I can't recommend buying it. I owned one for a few months and I'm sorry to say that it had serious quality issues. MP3/WMA/Vorbis playback via CD often resulted in complete hang-ups, forcing me to reset and re-configure the whole thing again and again, no matter which blanks and settings I used for burning the data. Trying to patch the firmware wasn't a solution, since I was only able to contact the retailer I bought the radio from, who told me that plu2 didn't provide any software updates for its products. Reading some angry comments in certain forums I found using Google revealed that in fact there's no support from the manufacturer at all.

Needless to say that the radio didn't last for long, it completely kicked the bucket only 4 months after I had installed it. Too bad I wasn't able to try my luck exchanging the broke thing for a new one, since I lost the entire car in a motorway accident a few days later, making the whole drama a case for the insurance.

hi, I have the jvc kd-g 721. When I first got it I emailed JVC about what sizes of drive the USB slot is compatible with, I got a reply stating it wasn't compatible with any type of FAT, wouldn't work with partitions bigger than 4gb and had 'no' compatability' with drives larger than 1gb. Also that the socked had unknown amps but 'considerably lower' than the 0.5A specified in the USB1.1 specs.

However, just plugged in my 120gb single partition FAT32 USB drive (with all my mp3's, software, movies....over a hundred folders) and after about 30 seconds 'checking' it proceeded to play the music on the drive. I was powering the drive from external mains at the time, but I just got a £25 inverter so it can run in the car, I presume it will all be fine Will update here when I know what formats it supports (some came up unsupported...but i didnt know what they were) via this method.... but its good to know this head unit will allow me to have my whole collection to hand

I have a Rockboxed Sandisk but I don't like the cabling and powercharge solution. A USB stick and just plugging in is much easier.

I agree completely about not wanting to dick around with portable audio player and cables etc.

My girlfriend and I bought a Best Buy house brand Insignia NS-C5111 of Ebay a year ago for about $50. It has an SD card slot and we love it because we can load up SD cards with oggs/mp3/whatever off the computer, put 'em in a pocket and away we go. It also includes a USB port on the front too, if you find that more convenient.

The NS-C5111s still pop up on ebay once in a while, but be warned: Make sure it comes with the original wiring chassis otherwise you're going to be in for some serious headaches trying get the thing installed into a car properly. I learned this the hard way after buying my first one without the chassis. It also turned out to be a dead unit, but at least I have a spare faceplate now.

I have a Rockboxed Sandisk but I don't like the cabling and powercharge solution. A USB stick and just plugging in is much easier.

I agree completely about not wanting to dick around with portable audio player and cables etc.

My girlfriend and I bought a Best Buy house brand Insignia NS-C5111 of Ebay a year ago for about $50. It has an SD card slot and we love it because we can load up SD cards with oggs/mp3/whatever off the computer, put 'em in a pocket and away we go. It also includes a USB port on the front too, if you find that more convenient.

The NS-C5111s still pop up on ebay once in a while, but be warned: Make sure it comes with the original wiring chassis otherwise you're going to be in for some serious headaches trying get the thing installed into a car properly. I learned this the hard way after buying my first one without the chassis. It also turned out to be a dead unit, but at least I have a spare faceplate now.

For what it's'worth, SilverCrest has some nice car radios supporting OGG:

Hmm maybe I'm missing something already said, but why is ogg worth all this trouble, over using something like AAC which is widely available (if you absolutely don't want to use MP3)? There are also car receivers like Pioneers and Alpines that will take your iPod via a single iPod USB cable and play anything on it, including ALAC.